People raise this kind of thing a lot when they want to be pedants but in reality "a billion" now is 10^9, regardless of where you are. The Americanisation of English could be viewed as sad - and often I think it is - but that's life.

Interestingly, the word "billion" in french stands for 10^12 (10^9 is called a "milliard"). This tends to provoke all sorts of confusion for french students learning english (and, I imagine, the reverse as well).

the word "billion" in british english means 10^12 to a lot of people too - hence the comment i replied to. before i went into science it meant 10^12 to me, as well, but spend long enough in science and you begin to see just how few people are aware of that - and it seems to get fewer each year.

Haha that would certainly be good. Until then we can all agree to use "a thousand millions" and "a million millions". The sheer irritation of typing all of that out - assuming that journalists won't add some key binding to automate it - will trigger a drive to ensure people know what 10^9 and 10^12 mean. Then we can slowly push them towards 10^{12}, which lets us type 10^121x without ambiguity. A few years down the road we could all be happily writing and reading LaTeX in news articles and do our bit agains

"1000 mg" makes sense if the number of significant digits is important (which it would be in medicinal dosages). Alternatively they could write it as 1.000 g, but 1000mg is easier to read and compare with smaller doses, such as 500mg.

... Then we can slowly push them towards 10^{12}, which lets us type 10^121x without ambiguity. A few years down the road we could all be happily writing and reading LaTeX in news articles and do our bit against the dumbing-down of the internet...

Well, lotsa luck with that plan. I'd guess that, for the mass media, it'll always be understood that any number with more than 3 digits (or any non-digit chars) will baffle 90% of their readers. So the editors with rewrite them in words that aren't well defined, but don't scare the huge majority of their readers.

I've always thought "quintillion" was a number people use when they can't understand how big a number is. Or "quadrillion", which I'd guess originally meant 10^24 or something like that. Maybe "quintillion" was 10^30.

the word "billion" in british english means 10^12 to a lot of people too - hence the comment i replied to. before i went into science it meant 10^12 to me, as well, but spend long enough in science and you begin to see just how few people are aware of that - and it seems to get fewer each year.

Or a little thinking (not too much) can realize that a million-million makes no sense in this context.

1-million-million is 1,000,000,000,000 (10^12).

This image is 150,000-million, or 150,000,000,000.

If 1 billion referred to was defined as million-million, it's easy to see that there would be more stars than pixels in the image by over 6 stars to 1 pixel.

OTOH, using it as meaning 10^9, it means there's 1 star for ever 150 pixels, which seems to make MUCH more sense.

There is this, as well, but it involves taking the extra few seconds or so to estimate whether the number seems reasonable. Though I have to say that the controversy makes me wonder if there are millions of people in Britain who think that their national debt (£900bn or thereabouts) is a thousand times worse than it is, given that the British media - universally, so far as I've noticed - describe such large debts in "billions" (10^9) and "trillions" (10^12).

In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000), while in American English it has always equated to a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000). British English has now adopted the American figure, though, so that a billion equals a thousand million in both varieties of English.

The same sort of change has taken place with the meaning of trillion. In British English, a trillion used to mean a million milli

In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000), while in American English it has always equated to a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000). British English has now adopted the American figure, though, so that a billion equals a thousand million in both varieties of English.

Interestingly, the word "billion" in french stands for 10^12 (10^9 is called a "milliard"). This tends to provoke all sorts of confusion for french students learning english (and, I imagine, the reverse as well).

The local TV quite often mistranslates "billion" when they talk about the US national debt.:) They make the US look really bad if you don't notice the absurdity of the mistranslated number, which most of the common folk don't. Should fire those guys and hire someone who actually knows English, anyway.

The local TV quite often mistranslates "billion" when they talk about the US national debt.:)... Should fire those guys and hire someone who actually knows English, anyway.

Except that English-language dictionaries don't agree on the meanings of any number words above "million". And there is no official standards body for the English language. Some other languages have such a body, notably French, but not English. And hiring people who pick one of a list of inconsistent definitions and declare it their "standard" is the process that led us to the morass that is the English-language "common speech".

As others have pointed out, scientific/engineering/LaTeX notation is the o

It's written in English, so it is most likely using the short-scale (American system, as you call it). The U.S. has always used the short scale system, and the U.K. (and almost all other English speaking countries) have used it since 1974 [wikipedia.org].

The long system is hardly used any place outside of Europe. So, this is one of the strange cases where the U.S. and the U.K. use the same system, and it's the system used by the majority of the world. In this case, it is France/Italy/Germany/Spain/Portugal/Netherlends that insist on using their own system.

The long system is hardly used any place outside of Europe. So, this is one of the strange cases where the U.S. and the U.K. use the same system, and it's the system used by the majority of the world. In this case, it is France/Italy/Germany/Spain/Portugal/Netherlends that insist on using their own system.

In Norway, 10^9 is kalled a "milliard", 10^12 is a billion, and 10^18 is a trillion. While "milliard" is in common use, to avoid confusion most people use "1000 milliards" in place of billion. Trillion is strangely enough common, even though the danger of confusion is just as bad as with billion. I've also seen 10^x used regularly even in normal newspaper articles.

If by "American" billion you mean "English" [wikipedia.org] billion, than yes. Since Slashdot is an entirely English speaking site, it is most appropriate to use the English word for 10^9... which is billion.

Giga is 10^9 pixels, so it would have to be an american billion.(10^9) - it would be a bit hard to get a British Billion (10^12) in that size of picture.

(and be able to count them.)In the British system, 10^9 is called a Milliard, and I think 1,000 british Billions is called a Billiard. (I am not sure how much a snooker would be.A Williard is the amount of money that the former head of Bain Capital has invested in the Cayman Islands

Anyway are there other objects in the image besides stars? (nebulas, galaxie

Yes. Now wouldn't it be great if we could share links to a coordinate and zoom level? They kind of missed one big detail to make this more useful.

ftfy
Let's give credit where it's due. That's quite a picture as is. I found it quite entertaining my self. Would be nice to have a share-able coordinate system though. perhaps you would put that together then?

Perhaps a silly question... Why do a lot of the stars when you zoom in you get a black dot in the middle...I mean if they were a planet. 1. so many of them shouldn't be almost directly in the middle. 2. Those planets would be HUGE (or a rogue planet eclipsing the star (still why then are all of them in the center) So that seems unlikely.

Raw CCD sensor data is usually more than 8 bits per channel (or colour filter). 16 bits per pixel is used for professional cameras, but those sensors use Bayer format for red, green and blue. Telescopes just place different colour filters over the entire sensor and correct for different levels of sensitivity.

Just about every CCD is infra-red sensitive. That's due to the use of silicon and other elements. Even a mobile phone can create nfra-red pictures if you place a suitable filter in front of the lens (eg. Hoya H72).

Of course, an astronomical telescope is going to have the sensor chilled down to well below 0C .

Was just looking at that and thinking...How much would it cost to get a photo quality print made that is 9 feet tall and long enough to wrap around my entire den at my house? That would be the best ever wallpaper.

There are other ways to get depth information, especially in studies like this. Various techniques such as those mentioned here [wikipedia.org] can be used to fill in at least some of the missing data. Then you can provide the viewer with virtual points of view that are many light years apart to allow perceiving the galaxy in stereo. And to answer GP's question, probably because there's an immense pile of other data to sort through to get that depth information. Sadly, we don't yet have the equivalent of Kinect to give

That only works if you live in the middle of the desert on top of a big hill and your house is a big dome with very clean windows. Otherwise there's all these buildings, clouds, lights and bird shit getting in the way.

A billion stars seems like a lot but general consensus is that the Milky Way alone has 300 +/- 100 billion stars. So at best this is like 0.5% of the galaxy. I just read about the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey looking at 300,000 galaxies and planning on hitting 1,000,000 eventually. The number of stars out there is truly mind blowing for us puny humans. It's really impressive if you stop to think about it.

A billion? - I kept counting forty-two. Then again, since it's not the whole Universe, maybe it was a only a subset like, say, two?
Seriously, though, very impressive. As Adams understated, "Space is Big". Yep...

Tell me again about your "personal relationship" with the being that created all of that?

Sorry but what does size of the universe have to do with that? You seem to have a lack of self esteem. Again, I'm not trying to force you to change your beliefs but I have to question the logic of your statement. One could argue that the size of the universe displays the awesome and limitless power of the almighty and the ability of the almighty to notice individuals within the scope of that creation. To me, that is awe inspiring.

Tell me again about your "personal relationship" with the being that created all of that?

Sorry but what does size of the universe have to do with that? You seem to have a lack of self esteem

Hey, our species created the being that "created" all of that. We should have esteem++.

Unless we're not delusional.

I find your circular logic amusing. Is this what you tell yourself to sleep at night? Does it keep your conscience at bay? Have you ever wondered why you are wired with a conscience that seems to war against your base desires?

We used to have these sort of philosophical debates in RE and Biology.

RE: Maybe God is the sum of all conscious / sentient thought in the universe. Everything else just obeys the laws of physics and can juat be left alone to tick along like clockwork.

Biology: How do we know something is "alive"? At the time, we used definitions like being able to reproduce, consume food and die. Then the answer was, it contained DNA, genes and enzymes that could interact.